Free Republic

16-years after the Bush administration began military operations in Afghanistan, President Trump has just launched a military campaign of his own using high-tech stealth fighters to bomb drug labs in the country....On Monday, the Defense Department said it unleashed F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to bomb narcotic production facilities in southern Afghanistan targeting the revenue streams of the Taliban... .....Every since the U.S. started occupying the country in the early 2000s, OPIUM PRODUCTION SOARED. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said without drugs, the war in Afghanistan “would have been long over.”....."In 2017, Afghanistan’s opium crop and production both HIT A RECORD HIGH.....The strikes Sunday hit...

Federal authorities have canceled the temporary deferred status of an illegal immigrant who is the face of so-called “dreamers” in the Atlanta area, opening the door to her possible deportation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stripped Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections from Jessica Colotl, a 28-year-old Mexican national, because she admitted to making a false statement to law enforcement following an arrest in 2010. A government lawyer asked an immigration judge to issue a deportation order on May 3. ICE confirmed Wednesday that Colotl’s case falls within with government policy not to offer protected status to certain categories of...

FBI Director James B. Comey overstated key findings involving the Hillary Clinton email investigation during testimony to Congress last week, according to people close to the inquiry. In defending the probe, Comey offered seemingly new details to underscore the seriousness of the situation FBI agents faced last fall when they discovered thousands of Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s emails on the computer of her husband, Anthony Weiner. “Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,” Comey said, adding later, “His then-spouse Huma Abedin appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him...

How did a giant, gaping hole tear through the massive Oroville Dam’s main concrete spillway last week, setting in motion the chain of events that could have led to one of America’s deadliest dam failures? Dam experts around the country are focusing on a leading suspect: Tiny bubbles.The prospect is simple, yet terrifying and has been the culprit in a number of near disasters at dams across the globe since engineers discovered it about 50 years ago. In a process called “cavitation,” ...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Sunday information released by Anchorage Police Department about Santiago's child was incorrect. In a written statement, FBI spokesperson Staci Feger-Pellessie said Santiago's child was not left inside the car when Santiago came to the FBI's Anchorage office. "The child was in constant custody and care of the FBI, inside our facility, until his mother retrieved him," Feger-Pellessie said. ORIGINAL STORY: Two months before Esteban Santiago allegedly went on a deadly shooting rampage in Florida, he surrendered a gun to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Alaska and told investigators he was "having terroristic thoughts,"...

Trump is now at 45 percent with likely voters, up seven points from his low of 38 percent earlier in the month. Hillary Clinton is at 47 percent while Gary Johnson is at four percent and Jill Stein is at two percent. That marks a seven point jump for Trump in just four days. Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton has seen her numbers drop three points in the same time period, making a 10 point swing in Trump’s favor.

When Sundance replaced Mark Levin in the hearts of so many Freepers, I should have taken the hint. The site has become almost totally partisan. That partisanship is leading to such incredible, slanderous commentary that you would have to look twice to see if you are at FR or DU. We talk about a circular firing squad, and here one pops up. We are destroying our chance to move the ultra left out of the White House by trying to destroy each other. So finally, sadly, I think it is time for me to go, I don't want to be...

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were among the first in the media, going back months, to take Donald Trump seriously. In contrast, Bill Kristol had repeatedly declared that we had reached "peak Trump," only to find The Donald confoundingly continuing to climb in the polls. Things boiled over on today's Morning Joe. Despite a fresh poll showing Trump with an astounding 48% of GOP voters in Massachusetts, Kristol blithely declared that Trump "is not going to be the nominee." That elicited sarcastic laughter from Scarborough, who shot back "we can show you clip after clip after clip after clip of...

Waco, Texas (CNN)Texas law enforcement officials are investigating what they say are new threats against officers from biker gangs in the wake of a recent shootout in Waco. Members of the Bandidos biker gang who are in the military "are supplying the gang with grenades and C4 explosives," according to a bulletin issued Thursday by the Texas Department of Public Safety and reviewed by CNN. The bulletin warns of plots targeting high-ranking law enforcement officials and their families with car bombs. The bulletin is based on unsubstantiated information from an informant who claimed to have obtained it from Bandidos and...

The media is now in full CYA mode over the shooting of 2 NYPD officers yesterday as they have gone to ground to give full cover to President Obama, the Mayor of New York, Al Sharpton and the whole crazed Left Wing. The created narrative now is that, "This was a lone suicidal gunmen, that had nothing to do with the anti-police protest or the movement for social justice!" The media has been quick to read statements from Obama, the Mayor and Sharpton concerning the shootings in the hopes of deflecting blame, but we need to remember that this was...

Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings tore into MIT professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber on Tuesday for his remarks on American voters and the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee made GOP chairman Darrell Issa’s opening statement sound tame by comparison. “As far as I can tell, we are here today to beat up on Jonathan Gruber for stupid — I mean absolutely stupid — comments he made over the last few years,” he began, staring angrily at the hapless professor.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio gave a heartfelt speech praising Israel at a private gala event hosted by AIPAC at the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan Thursday night, the local website Capital New York reported. According to an edited audio recording obtained by the site (below), de Blasio said that "part of his job description is to defend Israel" and that it is "elemental to being an American...

An American man who disappeared in Iran more than six years ago had been working for the CIA in what U.S. intelligence officials describe as a rogue operation that led to a major shake-up in the spy agency. Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent, traveled to the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 to investigate corruption at a time when he was discussing the renewal of a CIA contract he had held for several years. He also inquired about getting re­imbursed for the Iran trip by the agency before he departed, according to former and current U.S. intelligence officials....

As the House Oversight Committee prepares to question Benghazi witnesses on Wednesday, we need to remember that the accounts of personnel on the ground have long contradicted the account the CIA adopted just weeks after the attacks took the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. In early Nov., the CIA said the consulate's earliest call for help came in at 9:40 p.m. on Sept. 11. But the Blue Mountain Security manager, "who was in charge of the local force hired to guard the consulate perimeter," says he realized something was happening and put out calls for...

Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of his local mosque for 'crazy' behavior after getting involved a 'shouting match' with his imam according to one member of the congregation. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was ejected from his Boston mosque for aggressive behavior after insulting Martin Luther King Jr. during a Friday prayer service three months ago Tamerlan Tsarnaev was ejected from his Boston mosque for aggressive behavior after insulting Martin Luther King Jr. during a Friday prayer service three months ago Described as being full of rage by a worshiper who would give his name only as Muhammad, Tamerlan was...

The key bit comes at 2:00 of the video below. We all knew McCain was taking a lot of heat politically for dumping on Paul after his filibuster but I never would have guessed it was enough to squeeze an apology out of him. Good lord. How many times in his life, do you suppose, has Maverick apologized to a libertarian? Either he’s planning to run again for Senate in 2016 and wants to hedge his bets against a Paulian primary uprising in Arizona or he’s come to his senses and realized that his nastiness is doing the interventionist cause...

ZAGREB, Croatia — The Obama administration on Wednesday renounced the proclaimed leaders of the Syrian political opposition and said any group seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad must reject attempts by extremists to “hijack” a legitimate revolution. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Syrian National Council, or SNC, should no longer be considered the “visible leader” of the opposition. That made official what has been the increasingly obvious sidelining of an opposition group led mostly by middle-age Syrian expatriates.

The president implored his audience to not “buy into the cynicism” of believing change isn’t possible. The nation, though, has grown skeptical of its future, and perhaps of its president.

Shortly after the... shooting of a security guard at the Family Research Council’s (FRC) headquarters..., Truth Wins Out, a non-profit organization that fights anti-gay religious extremism, posted the following press release: "This is an awful tragedy and our thoughts and hearts go out to the victim, his family, and his colleagues at the Family Research Council,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “In America we settle political differences through robust debate in the public square, not with violence. If the shooting is found to be politically motivated, it is a detestable act of cruelty and cowardice and the...

"We need answers on this. Not defensive BS. Real answers." In email exchanges with subordinates in February and March 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder and the department's second-highest official expressed growing concern that something might have gone wrong in a federal gun-smuggling probe called Operation Fast and Furious. Two of Holder's emails and one by Deputy Attorney General James Cole were among documents the Justice Department showed Tuesday to Republican and Democratic staffers of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee in an effort to ward off a criminal contempt vote against the attorney general. The full contents of the...